Just Say It
by Takira
Summary: Another teeny Vegeta/Mirai no Trunks vignette...with regard to a certain incident during the Cell Game.


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Several years have waxed and waned since last I scuffed over this tired dirt for its own sake. It's odd, the things one forgets with the passage of time, and stranger still what one remembers. The big things, of course, we all recall with horrid clarity: the glaring sun that day, the insect in the ring, the ridiculous title of "game" for such a gamble; then the fight, Kakarotto making an ass of himself, Gohan making an even _further_ ass of himself...

...and, of course, in my ongoing quest to be the ultimate, I outdid them both.

What could have possessed me to take such a foolish risk, to throw myself at that thing with no more detailed plan than to destroy? Simply put, I am a hypocrite; and as I charged screaming toward what was nearly my end, I hadn't even the clarity of thought to see it. At the time, I could not have cared less for hypocrisy--it's fortunate. I didn't care for sanity either, which was...well, less fortunate. After all I'd told the idiot boy about letting himself get soft, one would think I'd adhere to my own canon. I did, honestly--for as long as I could. Ask him...he'll tell you.

It seems I have a longer memory than this shoddy planet. Most of the stains are gone from this place; you have to know where to look to find them. Images burn in my vision, long scorched into the bloody mosaic of memories, real and since created; I don't have to open my eyes to find the spot. The dust here is new, clean and utterly without respect for what passed here, blithely concealing the elegy so eloquently inscribed in blood that was never meant to have touched this ground.

For gods' sake, it wasn't even his world.

Ah, there one can see the stain, familiar red-brown-black. As I said, it's strange what one remembers: I distinctly recall the blood coming from his mouth and thinking for an absurd instant that he'd coughed it...that he had to still be breathing, still be alive; as though I hadn't experienced first-hand what a shot through the heart can do.

I remembered that a moment later and it did little to anchor me; all over again I felt the pain, the monster's eyes and mocking smile, the terror, the shame, and the utter, total defeat. Did he see his wasted life pass before him as he fell, did his heart burst not from the hissing beam that pierced it but the knowledge of his failure? I never knew. By the time I saw what had happened, he was dead and the moment was gone.

Would it have lessened his pain to meet my eyes, to see that I understood? Probably not...it just would have upset him further, that he'd been wrong about me--that I'd been wrong about me. Idle speculation, this, wasteful; it's over, he died. Not permanently, of course, but how could we know that at the time? The world was about to end. I wonder if he cared...his world was already dead before he came to watch ours fall. He fought that way, too; he fought as a man who has nothing of his own to protect but the blood in his veins. When Toronkusu fell, I took his place as the man standing with the least left to lose--and I acted on it.

They told me afterward that I screamed. I think I remember my mouth being open, but I can't for the life of me recall any sound. All I could see was his body; all I could hear was the silence that should have been his breath. That stupid hair I'd watched grow long over the course of a year with such irritation spread in the dust; it wasn't Saiyajin hair, he wasn't my true kin or even my true species. He hated me and everything I represented, he fought on my side only out of obligation to those he respected (he feared me--that is not the same). He meant nothing to the universe I planned to conquer, didn't belong on the planet which bore the slow-spreading stain of his death.

...and in that blinding moment of our mixed pain, I did not care.

In that moment all sensations fled me but one, one I hadn't felt so distilled since I'd thrown the last vestiges of my tattered pride at Freiza all those years ago; it wasn't merely bloodlust, but directed, focused, mushrooming out of the rage of absolute vengeance. That thing had killed the one I'd trained, the one I'd fought alongside; my...fellow soldier, perhaps, my...

_Just **say** it..._

...my son.

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End file.
